ZERV" tells of the first years after the fall of the Wall, the breaks in life courses, of completely different biographies and of the successful coming together in the common fight against crime, which knows no East and West. ZERV stands for the Central Investigation Office for Government and Association Crime, founded in Berlin in 1991 by decision of the federal government.

Beneath the decadence of 1929 Berlin, lies an underworld city of sin. Police investigator Gereon Rath has been transferred from Cologne to the epicenter of political and social changes in the Golden Twenties.

A Yenish boy is placed in a mental hospital and experiences the Nazi euthanasia program. Aware of what was happening and attached to friends, the lad attempts to sabotage the program. The film addresses the complexities of the program director, the lives of the child victims, and the struggles of the child protagonist. More than five thousand children died in the Nazi euthanasia program.

The film tells the story of the East Prussian landscape and its inhabitants. At one time Germans, Poles, Lithuanians and Jews lived here alongside and with one another. After World War II and the expulsion of Germans by Stalin, the Prussian province turned into a Russian enclave. Volker Koepp’s fourth film about the Kaliningrad region is dedicated to the generation, born in the '90s, and familiar with the Soviet Union and East Prussia only from school books. Parents and grandparents who were forcefully resettled to where they are now have never really felt at home. In the meantime they have hopelessly succumbed to unemployment and alcohol. Their children can only rely on themselves. Older siblings look after the younger ones, they play with what lies around, and the girl Ljuda can’t wait to finally turn eighteen, to be able to take her brothers home from the orphanage. The film has much confidence in the children. But what will become of them?

Love story spanning 60 years of the lives of Charlotte and Hugo. As a teenager before the war she is in love with him, but he marries her sister. They share some brief happy moments during the difficult post-war period, then they are separated for the longest time. They meet again as 80-year olds.